At a glance, 5.6 is simply a better MySQL with across the board improvements that hit every functional area of the database kernel, bringing benefits whether you deploy on-premise or in the cloud, including:
- Better Performance and Scalability
- Improved InnoDB for better transactional throughput and developer agility
- Improved Optimizer for better query execution times and diagnostics
- New NoSQL Access to InnoDB via Memcached, enabling key-value operations and complex SQL queries across the same data set
- Improved Replication for high performance, self-healing distributed deployments
- Improved Performance Schema for better instrumentation
- Improved Security for worry-free application deployments
- And other Important Enhancements
MySQL 5.5 has been called the best release of MySQL ever. MySQL 5.6 builds on this by
providing across the board improvements in performance, scalability, transactional throughput, availability and performance related instrumentation all designed to keep pace with requirements of the most demanding web, cloud and embedded use cases. The feature complete 5.6 Release Candidate is available for immediate download and evaluation from MySQL Developer Zone.
